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CHAPTER EIGHT THE JESUIT HERITAGE IN RHODE ISLAND The story of the Jesuit relationship to Rhode Island ante­ dates the establishment of the Diocese of Providence in 1872 and continues today in the Ocean State where Catholics number at least 600,000 out of a total population of almost 930,000. This chapter will survey the connection of the Society of Jesus to Rhode Island during the early period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when Jesuits were not tolerated, the modem period of the nineteenth century when Jesuits not only contributed to the planting of Catholicism but operated St. Joseph's in Providence, and the contemporary period of the twentieth century 'Nhen the Jesuits have been present in various ways in the Ocean State. I The story begins with Roger Williams, a dissident who was driven out of Massachusetts and founded Providence Plan­ tation in 1636. Although the new colony around Narragansett Bay gained a reputation for religious liberty, the charter of King Charles II of England granting freedom of conscience in 1663 was later re.stricted by the inclusion of a secret clause dis­ franchising Catholics. This was not made public until 1719 when it became known that no Catholic could hold public office. Thus, it is doubtful that it was in any way superior to the Religious Toleration Act passed in 1649 by Maryland where the Jesuits were influential. While one might argue that the clause against Cath@lics was not reflective of the views of Rhode Island's illustrious founder, there can be no doubt about his own hostile views about the Jesuits. Roger Williams wrote to John Winthrop, Jr., on 6 December 1659 expressing his displeasure with the action of the Pope in sending Jesuits to Venice. In 1670 Reverend - 164- The Jesuit Heritage in Rhode Island Williams, who was not ignorant of the success of the Jesuits in converting the Indians in Canada, blamed the missionaries for stirring them up. And, in his diatribe against the Quaker leader George Fox in 1672, he taunted his opponent by associating him with the Jesuits. Exactly what contact there was between the inhabitants of Rhode Island and the Jesuits is not clear for these early years of Roger Williams' time. But Bishop Laval of Quebec, who had most likely derived his information from the Jesuits, reported to Rome in the fall of 1663 that there were some 20,000 Narragansetts in six towns centering around Providence. A few years later the Narragansetts from their stronghold in South Kingston supported the native cause against the White settlers in King Philip's War until they were defeated by the English in 1676. Yet, despite the rhetoric of New Englanders in blaming the Jesuits for Indian troubles in that war, these missionaries were innocent. Roger Williams died in 1683, but the intolerance of the Jesuits in Rhode Island, as elsewhere in New England, con­ tinued, especially when Richard Coote, Earl of Bellomont, carried his anti-Jesuit drive into Rhode Island. Visiting this colony as the representative of the English crown in the fall of 1699, he was determined to bring about legislation outlawing the Jesuits. His duplicity was exposed when he met there in October (of the same year) Father Jacques Bruyas, S.J., who came as a representative of the Governor of New France to ascertain Bellomont's views of the Indians and to discuss repa­ triation of prisoners after the Treaty of Ryswick. If Father Gabriel Druillettes, S.J., did not pass through Rhode Island on his way to and from Connecticut during mid-seventeenth century, then Father Bruyas was the first priest to visit the Ocean State. Despite its reputation for toleration, Rhode Island was not entirely free of the anti-Jesuit animus so prevalent in New England during the eighteenth century. Like the other colonies in New England, it was partially motivated by hatred of the French and Jesuits. Not only had it been involved in the various attacks upon the French in Canada, but its own contribution to the assault upon Louisbourg in 1745 won a reimbursement of - 165 - The Jesuit Heritage in Rhode Island 6,322 pounds sterling. The consciousness of the Jesuits to Rhode Islanders was evident in 1751 when Job Shepherd's almanac published at Newport satirized the many efforts of these missionaries among the Indians. Although the Jesuits were suppressed before the American Revolution, their influence was not lost on the French military and naval officers who contributed to the American cause and were so evident at Newport and elsewhere during the War for Independence. From 1685 to 1762, the Jesuits were in charge as the teachers and chaplains of the royal naval colleges at Brest and Toulon. The French naval officers who so graciously entertained John Adams at dinner on the Triomphant off Spain on 13 December 1779 surprised the American by speak­ ing with such admiration for the former Jesuits. Obviously, Mr. Adams did not fully realize that a priest, Father Ruggiero Giuseppe Boscovich, a member of the sup­ pressed Society of Jesus, was appointed by the French King to be director of marine optics for the French Navy shortly before the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. Actually the Jesuits had been recognized long before that time as the special­ ists for the textbooks on military and naval sciences. One of them, Father Paul Hoste, a professor at Toulon, had written the classic work, L 'art des armees navales, which was published at Lyons in 1697 and became the bible of French naval theory and practice during the eighteenth century. Consequently, it is not unlikely that Charles-Henri Louis d'Arsac de Temay, the French Admiral who died at Newport in December of 1780 and was buried with Catholic rites in the Protestant churchyard of historic Trinity Church (a special tablet of black marble inside this Episcopal church honors the memory of Admiral de Temay, a Roman Catholic), came under the influence of the Jesuit masters. Moreover, two of the heroes of the Revolutionary War had studied under the Jesuits. Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau, who had set up his headquarters at Newport in 1780, was a student under the Jesuits at Blois for about an academic year. Newport honors him with a statue in King Park. Thaddeus Kosciuszko, who served on the staff of General Nathaniel Greene of Newport, studied under the Jesuits - 166 - The Jesuit Heritage in Rhode Island at Breese and had a half-brother that was a Jesuit. The Polish hero, who honored the Greenes by a visit to Newport in 1784, was first buried in the crypt of the Jesuit church in Soleure, Switzerland, when he died in 1817 before his body was returned to his native land and entombed in the Cathedral at Cracow. Rhode Island, like the other states in New England, came under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Quebec and the Vicar Apostolic of London before the United States had its first American Catholic bishop in John Carroll. Appointed in 1789, the former Jesuit became the first Catholic bishop in the history of the new nation with jurisdiction over the Ocean State. The early history of the Jesuit relationship to Rhode Island cannot overlook the artist Gilbert C. Stuart who was born at Saunderstown in 1755. Not only did he portray George Washington, but he did portraits of Bishop John Carroll, the parents of Father Joseph Coolidge Shaw, S.J., and John Holker, a relative of E. Holker Welch, S.J., and the first French Consul in Boston. Stuart died in 1828 and his birthplace is an historical landmark in the Ocean State today. One of the earliest priests whom Bishop Carroll sent to New England was John Thayer, a native of Boston and a former Congregationalist minister, who had served as chaplain to Governor John Hancock of Massachusetts. A graduate of Yale, he studied in Europe where he met some members of the suppressed Society of Jesus. Following his conversion in 1783, he lived with the ex-Jesuits of the English College at Rome. Introduced to Bishop Carroll by the ex-Jesuit, Ch~rles Plowden, who furnished information about the Bostonian (Benjamin Franklin told the Bishop that he did not have too high an opinion of him), Father Thayer was assigned to New England. He visited Newport as early as 1791 and as late as 1798 and perhaps at other times between those two visits. And, since the law disfranchising Catholics had been repealed in 1783, Catholics were enjoying greater freedom in the exercise of their rights as the century terminated. II With the opening of the modem period of the relationship of the Jesuits to Rhode Island, Bishop John Carroll was the dominant personality. Not only did he exercise jurisdiction over - 167 - The Jesuit Heritage in Rhode Island the state until 1808, but he paid a personal visit to it in the fall of 1803. On his way back from dedicating Holy Cross Church in Boston, he stopped at Newport and baptized two children in the family of Joseph Mehe. John Lefebvre de Cheverus, who was ordained by Arch­ bishop Carroll in 1810 as first Bishop of Boston, had jurisdic­ tion over Rhode Island until ·1825. Although there were no former Jesuits working in his diocese before the restoration of the Society of Jesus in 1814, there was still evident a bias against them. For David Benedict, the Baptist pastor of Paw­ tucket, attacked the Jesuits in 1813 when he published his history of the Baptist churches. This attitude, not unlike the one evident in the writings of Roger Williams, was not uncom­ mon in New England at that time.

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